Typical American (15 page)

"I don't know. Ralph, you know, thinks his life is going to go up and up and up."

"Maybe I should tell him ... ?"

She frowned. "No, I don't think so."

"You're sure?" He grasped her hand. His touch was firm and warm, his reaching out somehow unextraordinary.

"If there were some way he could save face," she began; and before she knew what she was doing, she had removed her hand from Old Chao's, that she might massage her brow.

The first time in her life a man had ever touched her, and all she'd done was fret about her brother! She felt veiled in cobwebs, a woman wedded to her family.

"Say Ralph found some kind of job," she said the next day, "for which he got paid something like what he gets now. Then if I moonlit in the emergency room in addition to my practice, we could manage it."

"How could you moonlight on top of your practice?" asked Old Chao. "When would you sleep?"

"I'm used to no sleep. I don't sleep now." She wished Old Chao would put his hand on hers again.

"And look at you," he said instead, gently.

"It's my duty."

Old Chao called for the check.

They would hop up, take the steps by twos, jump them backwards, all without using their hands; and then they would bump down on their stomachs like alligators. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Mona liked the going down part, even though she got rug burns, but Callie preferred the going up. She liked the work of it, the feeling that she was getting somewhere; and she liked the view that was her reward, a tunnel of impressions that moved from their plaid sofa to their cardboard-box cocktail table, and from there on out the picture window, through which she could see almost everything going on at the Kennedys' across the way.

Theirs was the last house in the neighborhood to be built, but when they moved in the area was still so new that local maps showed it as woods. The just-paved dead end was shiny black as the enamel walls of their oven, and all the yards were staked off with twine, as only the Kennedys had real grass (their rich uncle having had sod installed for them). Everyone else had spotty coverings of skinny, peapod-colored seedlings that they watered two, three, four times a day, depending on the weather. Rainy days were days off; sunny days it was back on the job. Some of the more ambitious neighbors had planted bushes and trees too — squat, well-spaced bundles of leaves and scrawny, solitary saplings — but the grass was the true binding hope of the neighborhood, and it was when the Changs spread their lot with lime and peat and 6-8-3 th at they started to get to know everyone. Mrs. O'Connor lent them her Rototiller; Mr. Rossi, his spreader; Mr. Santone, his abundant advice; and soon their sprinkler was casting its bit of the community spell, crossing and recrossing the soil in concert with its fellow magicians up and down the street.

What had they understood about America? Evenings, they shook their heads at themselves. We didn't realize.

We thought we knew. But we didn't know.

We thought we lived here.

But actually knew nothing.

Almost nothing.

Completely nothing!

They would eat supper; then fortified, go on — really, nothing; nothing really — finding, to their pleasant surprise, that the deeper their former life sank in the black muck of ignorance, the higher their present life seemed to spring. So bright it shone, so radiant with truth and discovery! It was as if the land they had been living in had turned out to be no land at all, but a mere offshore island, a featureless mound of muddy scrub and barnacle-laced rock, barely big enough for a hospital, an engineering school. Whereas this New World — now this was a continent. A paradise, they agreed. An ocean liner compared to a rowboat with leaks. A Cadillac compared to an aisle seat on the bus. Every dream come dreamily true.

Except, that is, that their corner of paradise seemed after a few days to be carpeted not with plush grass, but birds. A whole flock of birds; and not loopy-plumed songbirds, but scrappy, raucous brown birds with teeth. Callie swore they had teeth. Helen tried to set her straight gendy. "Birds don't have teeth." "In America they do," Callie answered. "I saw them! These are American birds, with teeth!" So insistent, that after a while Helen found herself going out to have a good look herself. Teeth? She was on her hands and knees on their flagstone walk when their neighbor Arthur Smith strolled by.

"Problems?" Arthur Smith, once a slender man, now was slender still except for the beach ball he sported under his shirt. He squinted, pursing his lips. His hair was cut so short Helen could see sweat beading on his pink and brown scalp.

"So many birds," Helen said weakly. She casually wiped her hands against each other, brushed her knees off.

"That's life." He continued to stand there.

"Maybe there's something wrong with that seed we used?"

Mr. Smith considered the birds. "You folks Japanese?"

"Chinese."

"There you go," he said. "That's what I told Marianne. I told

her, it ain't Japs moved in. Them Japs is farmers. These don't know dirt from dirt."

Helen smiled weakly.

"You ever raised up a lawn before?"

"No."

"There you go, I told Marianne that too. I could tell that just from our living room," he boasted. "Watching through the window."

Did he really watch them through the window? By day, Helen moved self-consciously through the yard. By night, she watched back. This was how she found out he kept a gun. "A long one," she told Ralph. "He cleans it and shines it while he watches TV."

The grass wasn't coming up. They waited.

More birds.

Until one bright day, at long last, a green shadow appeared; Helen had to examine it back on her hands and knees again (hoping Arthur Smith wasn't watching) to be sure it wasn't moss, or mold. Seedlings! So what, that one of their neighbors kept a gun? In among the birds, there were seedlings! Then there were fewer birds; and after that there was grass of an unearthly green, so bright it glowed far into the twilight, like a luminescent clock dial. Who wouldn't shake their heads to see it? The Changs agreed — a lawn like this was more than just nature, just life. A lawn like this was America. It was the great blue American sky, beguiling the grass upward. It was the soil, so fresh, so robust, so much better quality than Chinese soil; Chinese soil having been prevailed upon for too many thousands of years. The blades were a bit skinny now, but they would fatten. Of course! After all, this was top-quality grass, grown out of top-quality soil.

Just as a top-quality family was growing out of a top-quality house; or so Helen believed. Taking her afternoon rest on the living room couch, her feet on the cardboard cocktail table (she was saving up for a new one, and maybe for a love seat too, to

go in her nook off the kitchen), she couldn't help but wonder — could a house give life to a family? A foolish idea. And yet, the house did seem to have filled itself, to have drawn out of the family roomfuls of activity. Moving day, she remembered, they had clumped together in the living room like a pork ball; for a long moment, she'd almost believed they were always going to find themselves there, just inside the front door, their own intimidation sweeping toward them like a tide of soup. The moment passed, though. A relief. They were people, not ground pig shoulder. But would they always move about the house as if in a department store, trying to make sure that no one got lost? How real a possibility that seemed then; the space seemed like a threat, a challenge.

Whereas now, what would they do without it? So much livelier they all were! Helen had never seen the children run so much, touch so much, shout so much. They did not contain themselves. Why should they? Theresa talked to herself, Helen noticed, sometimes loudly; Ralph swung his arms around when he walked, sprawled when he sat. Even his papers had begun to proliferate. As for herself, she'd begun leaving the radio on all day, and cooking big complicated meals involving multiple bowls. Also, she breathed more. Or differently, so that for the first time in her life she noticed smells. She still didn't believe she breathed as oddly as Ralph claimed. But it did seem possible that in the city, she hadn't wanted to take in the fumes and gases, everyone else's exhaust; that air was like garbage air. Compared to this. She loved the aromas of the dirt, the grass, the flowers; the rain. Who would have thought the rain would smell? The seasons had their smells too; and indoors, she smelled clean house, soapy children, a medicinal sister-in-law, a sex-strong husband. How amorous Ralph had grown since they moved! He winked at her, he flirted in front of the children. "How many boyfriends you think your mother had before me?" he would ask them; and they would answer, "A thousand," or "A million," or "Ten zillion trillion," the highest numbers they could

think of, only to have him always say, smiling at her, "More."

Finally they would turn to her. "So why'd you marry him?"

And she would answer, "Because he was the best," or "Because he was the smartest," or "Because he was the handsomest."

He would add, "And the luckiest."

And later they would laugh about that, about how strange it was that their marriage should have turned so loverlike after so many years. "My mother used to tell me it would be this way," she told him once. "But I didn't believe her"

"What way?" he said.

"She used to tell me that marriage would be like a pot of cold water put on the fire. For years it would be cold, she told me, and then slowly it would come to a boil."

"It was like cold water?" Ralph sounded hurt. "For years?" But a few minutes later, the light was out, and his outspread hand was in her pajamas, circling. "Boil, boil" he whispered. "Are we boiling now? Eh? Are we boiling?"

She pressed herself against him, stretching. "Let's have more children."

"As many as you want."

"Two more."

"Boys, right?"

"If we can manage."

"Boys coming up," said Ralph. "Does it feel like boys?"

"A boy, anyway." Helen laughed.

"Hmmm," said Ralph.

What couldn't the house do.

In the fall, Callie started kindergarten. Helen bought her a navy blue jumper with a duck for a pocket, a light blue blouse with a Peter Pan collar, matching light blue stretch ankle socks with lace trim, and a pair of marine blue tie-up Buster Browns with such perfectly smooth pale tan leather soles that Callie wouldn't wear them home from the store. "Beautiful!" she said, kissing

them. "Look, Mommy, beautiful!" "They are beautiful," Helen agreed; and that night she allowed Callie to go to sleep with one hand in each shoe, while envious Mona looked on.

"Can I have one?"

"Tomorrow," Callie promised.

"I want one!"

"Tomorrow!"

"I want one now! Now!"

"Okay," said Callie. "Baby."

The next morning, the shoe was gone.

"Where is it!" screeched Callie. "Where is it!"

"Come on, Mona," said Helen. "We got to go."

"It's in jail," said Mona.

"In jail! Where in jail? Where?"

Mona giggled.

"My sho-oe," wailed Callie.

"Mona!" said Helen. "Where's that shoe! Give it to me! You hear me? Right now!" But even when Helen spanked her and called her a bad bad girl, Mona refused to produce the shoe, and in the end Callie went to school in one old shoe and one new one.

"You're a dirty rotten," cried Callie.

Mona shrugged, diffident.

"Come on, now," said Helen, already out on the front step. "Time to go."

"You're a baby!" yelled Mona as they left.

"You are!"

"You are!"

"Come on!" shouted Helen. "We got to go! Right now!"

"See you later, baby," said Callie.

As the door slammed, Mona's hair whipped across her face and caught in her mouth. She chewed on it.

Ralph came up behind her. "Taste good?"

She didn't say anything.

"Maybe you should have something else to eat?"

She shook her head.

"Some" — he thought — "some candy bar?"

Mona burst into tears.

He took out his handkerchief. "Ah, Mona." He dabbed gently at her eyes. For a special treat, he allowed her to play in his office, usually off limits, and when she crawled into the kneehole of his desk, he hung an old shirt down the front of it, making a tent. "Ahhrr!" Mona roared, emerging. "I'm a dragon!" Ralph pretended to be scared until Mona grew bored. Then he let her rummage through his desk drawers, rearranging them however she liked.

smaller even than a pauper's box), but to have to embalm himself first. How lifelike he had to look, how perfectly, robustly professorial! For the gatekeepers of heaven were to review him in state, that they might make their decision: Would this man be a credit to the empyrean* Can you imagine him a colleague of yours* A colleague of yours — for eternity*

Some of them nodded their long white locks yes. Some of them shook them no. About half and half, Ralph figured.

Would he ascend or descend?

In only months, he would know.

Meanwhile, he hammered at his statements with the small obsession of a woodpecker. He thought he should write them in Chinese, then translate them, but when he sat down, he perversely found that he wanted to compose in English. Was one way better? He'd try it the other way too, then backtrack, then rewrite what he'd written, again and again, until he couldn't even tell if what he was writing was different from what he'd written before. Sometimes he considered that he could not be too careful. At the same time he wondered if, being overcareful, he would never finish his statements at all. In fact, he dreaded finishing; as long as he hadn't finished, there was still hope. (He doesn't look as well as he might, but you know, the embalmer's not done.) He found that whereas when he began his statements he could spend hours on a paragraph, after some practice he could spend days, even weeks; and then he needed to consider what Old Chao would think of it, or Ken Freedberg, who was

probably going to vote no, no matter what So Ralph wished

he could believe, at least. Because the times he thought there might be something he could say to change Ken's mind, or Neil Nixon's, or Lou Radin's, or Chris Olsen's, were the times he agonized most. What was the word that would do it? If only the word would occur to him! If only he were a person to whom it would occur!